Carnal Reason

Perry de Havilland, in Samizdata:

And where are the marchers in the west? Where are the protesters calling for justice in Zimbabwe? Where is the outrage from those tireless tribunes of the Third World, the UN? Why can I not hear the snarls of fury from the alphabet soup of NGOs? What of the legions of Guardian readers finding out about all this? What are they going to call for? Amnesty International is getting a lot of (bad) publicity from having called Guantanamo Bay ‘a gulag’ whilst now admitting they do not actually know what is happening there, yet why are they not straining every fibre of their being in opposition to this African horror?

Joe Katzman replies in Winds of Change:

Surely you jest, Perry. Comrade Mugabe is an anti-colonialist hero to many of them. He got his lifetime pass long ago - and he’s been using it for a very long time. Or did you miss the massacres of thousands and reign of terror during the 1980s?

Besides, lighten up! Mass forced starvations aren’t just a catastrophe, they’re an important neo-Marxist tradition! The poor guy is just trying to be part of the club with his comrades in Russia, North Korea, North Vietnam, China, Ethiopia, and Cambodia. Really, it’s all just a differently-relevant culture with its own distinct narratives to cherish as it joins the global rainbow struggle for social justice and equality against the global patriarchical capitalist henegmony. Anyway, don’t you know the evil U.S. regime is killing Iraqi babies and serving them at White House banquets with hoisin sauce?

Damn, I wish I had written that. It is worthy of Scrappleface.

The point of Katzman’s essay is that the slaughter in Zimbabwe has convinced him that gun ownership is a universal human right. There is no right to life absent the means to defend life. Katzman concludes:

The Right to Bear Arms. It’s not just for Americans any more.

Welcome aboard.

Posted on June 10th, 2005 by pwyll
Filed under: General, politics